I also tend to get a kick out of Twitter-stalking Blizzard employees and other folks in the gaming community. (None of them have blocked me yet as far as I can tell, so… WINNING.)

Some quick personal bits: I’m in my 30s, I live in the New York City area, I work in health journalism/media, and I have a cat who likes to sit on my arms and chew my headset cords while I’m raiding.

What I Plays

In World of Warcraft, my main character is Rfeann, a level-90 night elf rogue on the Sentinels (U.S.) server. Her pixels first coalesced in October 2008. It took her a little more than a year to reach max level during Wrath of the Lich King, because the guy who pushes her buttons is not the most efficient leveler — I’ve always been more of a “it’s about the journey, not the destination” kind of person.

I vastly prefer PvE to PvP. I’ve gone through periods where I give wanton murder of my fellow players a shot (usually in random battlegrounds), but it ends up giving me heart palpitations and nightmares, so I usually stop within a week or two and curl up into a ball for a couple of years until I decide to try it again.

I really like to raid. I enjoy the teamwork, the challenge, the camaraderie of a well-prepared, well-led, coordinated raid group, and the feeling of accomplishment from being pushed to perform at the top(ish) of my game and sometimes managing not to suck at it. I tend to hang with a small core of similarly minded players on my backwater PvE server and hold out hope for those beautiful periods when my group comes together long enough to start making some real progress.

When that doesn’t happen, yet I still find myself logged into WoW, I tend to prefer doing my own thing. I do quests and dailies, explore the pixellated world around me, periodically dabble in achievement hunting and solo-raiding, and sometimes level my alts (very, very slowly).

What This Be

The Red-Hatted Rogue Reporter isn’t here for me to tell you what I think you should do or how you should feel about the rogue class. I don’t have the first-hand experience, boss-kill bonafides, World of Logs rankings or PvP accomplishments to claim that I know better than anyone else. I’m just a casual player wading through a vast, sometimes overwhelming universe of expertise and information, and I get an unsettling amount of enjoyment out of keeping track of it, making sense of it and sharing that with you in hopes it can in some way improve your own gaming experience.

R^3 is mostly about me reporting what is, and letting you decide how to feel about (or what to do with) that information. I only comment on what I think should be when I actually know what I’m talking about. (Or when I think I do, which admittedly happens more often than it probably should.)

Credit for the precious few pretty things I’ve permitted to exist on this otherwise-spartan site: Rfeann profile illustration by Patrick Best, and title banner by the outstanding and multitalented Alt:ernative Chat, a.k.a. The Godmother, a.k.a. The Mistress of Faffing.

I played a rogue for quite a while, back when rogues had unique talents that were desired in PvE (picking locks, stealth, big damage). It was frustrating to see how druids could switch between 3 different styles of play and be just as stealthy as a rogue. In my eyes if you’re a jack of all trades then you shouldn’t be a master of any of them, but that’s the price for flexibility. Then mages gained some stealth ability. It just seemed (to me) that what was unique about rogues (or any class) seemed to go away, as Blizzard gave some of these class-specific skills to more and more classes. This, and the never-ending grind to maintain PvP gear just wore me down.

Great website, I’ve followed it for quite some time. your passion for rogues and their development, not to mention your understanding of that process, is inspiring. Though I am sad you are alliance, keep it real. I look forward to your posts filled with rogue delights.